Out and About

When I arrived at Keesler AFB in the spring of 1973 there were (as best as I can I recall) three other airmen from my flight in basic training who ended up in the the same dorm as me... First was Juneau (AKA the Grinch), who was a constant presence (or should I say annoyance?). Then there was Little, who had been my squad leader at Lackland. And finally Copley, who I hadn't gotten to know very well during basic... And here's a few stories:

Story #1:
Before Airman Little and I had that falling out over that loan he didn't pay back until months after the due date we made the rounds of the nearby churches... Yes - we were trying to pick up girls :-) We figured it would be easier than going to bars (not to mention that the church girls had a lot fewer tattoos - and a lot more teeth), but the "church folk" didn't really trust military men (probably with good reason) so it didn't work out...

Story #2:
One Saturday a few weeks after arriving at Keesler I was "out and about" with a few guys I barely knew. As I recall, it was Gutierrez (married, but his wife and kids hadn't arrived yet), Parker (AKA Kung Fu - whose van we were riding in), and that obnoxious ass-clown who said "Arf!" all the time...
Sometime that afternoon we met a couple of 16 year old girls from New Orleans on the beach near Gulfport... Now - I don't remember much about the rest of the evening but at some point we all ended up in the back of Kung Fu's van in their hotel parking lot, and the girls were rotating amongst us  being major "teases" (admittedly so)... At one point I was making out with one of them - totally her idea (not that I minded) - when she said "Stop!" so I stopped and she was like "Why did you stop?" and I was like "Because you said to stop" and she was like "Are you crazy??"... Yeah - I never could understand the rules to that game :-)
Eventually the girls' parents came looking for them and they left without any of us getting past second base (I'm sure that was their "game plan"). But I did learn a few things:
First, 4 guys hitting on 2 girls in the back of a van can get really awkward... Second, the girls were batsh*t crazy... And lastly, it is impossible to pronounce "New Orleans" correctly unless you grew up there :-)

BTW: The age of consent in Mississippi was 14 back then (it was raised to 16 a bit over a decade ago) so those two girls were definitely "legal", but they should have been required to wear warning signs for other reasons :-)

 Story #3:
Airman Copley and I ended up in the same dorm bay when we got to Keelser so we started hanging out together. That next weekend he went home (to Georgia?) and brought back his Suzuki T-500 Titan (500cc 2-stroke street bike). He was a serious rider (wanted to be a motor cop) and had a spare helmet so we spent a lot a time cruising around on weekends (riding 2-up)...

Now - as I mentioned in an earlier post, when we got to Keesler we had been briefed on the local traffic laws and were specifically told that helmets were not required in Mississippi. What they did not tell us (and I always wondered if that was intentional) was that the city of Biloxi did have a helmet law.
We found that out the hard way one really hot, humid Sunday afternoon when we stopped at the main light in town and took off our helmets to cool off. It only took a few seconds for the cop to light us up.
We followed him to the police station (a few blocks away) where they booked us. (Yes - they actually booked us for violating a city ordinance.) I remember being kind of pissed off because the woman at the desk put down that I had a "ruddy complexion"... I was thinking "It's darn near 100 degrees out and I just got busted by Barney Fife for trying to cool off... Has it occurred to you that maybe that's why my face is red???" ... Strange, the details that stick in one's memory :-)

Aside: Over 30 years later I applied to take the Oregon Bar Exam and was supposed to list every traffic ticket I had ever gotten. At the time I couldn't recall ever having gotten one and It wasn't until a couple of years later that it dawned on me that the "helmet incident" probably qualified... But I sincerely doubt that it would have disqualified me from practicing law :-)

Yeah - it was all but impossible to spend much time at Keesler AFB without having an encounter with the Biloxi Police. (It was a frequent topic of conversation in the dorm)... Apparently their officers didn't get paid a whole lot more than minimum wage so the fact that they treated airmen as a source of revenue wasn't surprising...

There is one more incident I had intended to include in this post, but this is running a bit long so I'll defer it to the next one... And yes - it does involve "Biloxi's Finest" :-)